I have been a customer with multiple lines and services with AT&T for about 5 years and until recently I have had a relatively okay experience with the customer service I have never experienced anything like this with any company before and I figured I should tell people what happened to me.
I called in to make an arrangement for a partial payment on my bill, I made the arrangement for a few days later to be paid at an AT&T store also signed up for a new data plan that is much cheaper than my old plan was and with twice the data, so i felt good about that call but that was very short lived. Everything went fine and as per the arrangement i walked into the store to pay the bill like i said i would paid in cash and left.
I wake up two days later and I have no phone service.
I call customer service and asked what happened the answer i got was "Well you didn't call back about your payment arrangement so we disconnected your service and now you have to pay the remainder of your bill and they also tried to charge me an extra reconnection fee. I asked why would i need to call back when I made the payment like I said I would on the exact date stated in our arrangement and instead of an answer i was told that he didn't see any authorization for the payment arrangement in his system but he could see that I made a payment and it was credited to the account. After a couple of minutes of back and forth with this guy he finally comes up with an "answer" and says"Well he CAN see the arrangement BUT the person who authorized your payment arrangement didn't have the authorization herself to do so" i was so mad at this point at the obviously made up answer i asked to speak to the manager the guy politely said that he would connect me to a manager and then hung up on me.
I call back and instead of speaking to another customer service rep i just ask to speak to a manager directly and of course the woman who picked up couldn't let that happen without a fight so after insisting until she gave up i finally got to a manager told him the exact story of what the first Representative did and my exact problem and tells me the same thing as the first guy except this time without the bold faced lie about the woman not being authorized to make a payment arrangement no apology for the Representative no acknowledgment that they made a mistake nothing just"pay your bill in full and thats the only way we can turn on your service" . I told them i wont be paying any fees and shouldn't have to pay the bill in full at that exact moment because I did exactly what i said i would and he had no answers just repeatedly said" pay your bill in full or we cant turn your service back on.
Needless to say I will never pay that ridiculous fee and I'm definitely canceling my other wireless and Uverse services with the company, this was a joke and the snide smugness of the customer service team i was involved with was downright disrespectful.